the course of the concluding years of the first, and the
opening years of the second, epoch of the Formative Age of the Faith, by
the Baha'i communities in the United States, in Persia, in the British
Isles, in Latin America, in Canada, in India, Pakistan and Burma, in
'Iraq, in Australia and New Zealand, in Germany and Austria, in Egypt and
the Sudan, have raised the number of Baha'i centers established in both
hemispheres to two thousand five hundred maintained by representatives of
the white, the black, the yellow, the red and the brown races of mankind,
comprising ten in the Arabian Peninsula, over thirty in Egypt and the
Sudan, over forty in the recently opened European goal countries, over
fifty in the British Isles, over sixty in Australia, New Zealand and
Tasmania, over seventy in Germany and Austria, over ninety in Canada, over
ninety in India, Pakistan and Burma, over one hundred in Central and South
America, over six hundred in Persia and over one thousand two hundred in
the United States of America. The superstructure of the Sepulcher of the
Martyr-Herald of the Faith--a three-quarters of a million dollar
enterprise--is nearing completion, on the slopes of the Mountain of God,
within the heart of the Holy Land, the nest of the Prophets, and the
divinely chosen Spiritual and Administrative Center of the Baha'i world.
The preliminary measures, heralding the unfoldment of the institution of
Guardianship, the pivot of 'Abdu'l-Baha's Will and Testament, have been
adopted, through the appointment of the first two contingents of the Hands
of the Cause, numbering nineteen, recruited from the five continents of
the globe, representative in their extraction of the three principal
religions of mankind, and constituting the nucleus of that august
institution invested with such weighty and sacred functions by the Center
of Baha'u'llah's Covenant. The International Baha'i Council, comprising
eight members, charged with assisting in the manifold activities attendant
upon the rise of the World Administrative Center of the Faith, which must
pave the way for the formation of a Baha'i International Court and the
eventual emergence of the Universal House of Justice, the supreme
legislative body of the future Baha'i Commonwealth, has been established,
enlarged, and the functions of its members defined. The number of the
pillars of the Universal House of Justice has been raised to twelve
through the successive formation of the Cana